Motivation: Fake It Till You Make It

November 7, 2018

Today I was in a slump. To be honest, I’ve been in a slump for a few weeks, even before the Yorton Cup. I’ve been faking it. My motivation for the stage burned out this season. I’m not sure exactly why. Maybe it’s because my desire to be extreme has faded and bodybuilding is a sport of extremes. Extremely rigid dieting, extremely rigid workouts, extremely restricted life.

Show day was a blast, as it always is. It’s amazing how the body can change through the course of 12 weeks, having gone from around 146 pounds to 126 by stage day. Physically, I felt pretty great most of the time. I kept telling my coach, “I should feel worse than this,” after weeks of living off about 1500 calories a day. I can only attribute my physical well-being to all of the vitamins that I take each week, from a multi-vitamin, fish oil with CoQ10, a B6 complex, probiotic, and magnesium all purchased through Thorne. Despite my physical state, my mental state was not keeping up. My mood was great, I was enjoying small extra treats during prep to ensure that I had a balanced off season, but my desire to compete was dwindling. My motivation was nearly gone, even as close to a week before Yorton. As I told some of my clients in spin class today, I had to fake it till I made it. Well right now I’m faking it hard. With only 3 days till my last show of the season, I am struggling each day to keep going. It is my routine that keeps me from quitting when I am this close to the end. Daily cardio, sometimes twice a day, weight training four times a week, meal prepping more fish for the thousandth time, all the water, all the sleep, all the posing practice.

My routine is keeping me in the hunt. Without it I would have thrown in the towel a long time ago. You may be surprised in reading this, but I am not always motivated. I am just like you. People look to me for motivation, but who do I look to? The other women I coach, the other female competitors that I’ve developed friendships with over the past two years, anyone who is brave enough to do something really hard and keep going till it’s done. If you’re faking it till you make it, keep going. Eventually your spark will return. I know mine will. I am not sure if mine will ever return for competing, but today I’m going to keep going till show day and know that I did my best.